The best bread in the Lunigiana is said to be Pane di Vinca, bread from the tiny mountain village of Vinca.

It's rough. Few vehicles can make it up here. So you wander.

Choose the right street and you might come upon Mario’s little store, where he will sell you Miele Apuano Vinca, local honey. But not just any honey! It’s: extra vergine integrale super energetico honey. Mario recommends his honey for “sportsmen, moms, grandparents, kids, and convalescents.” The medicine you need.

You might also see Federicci measuring wood he's working upon, his chisel at the ready.

There’s a spring; someone’s thoughtfully built a little marble shelf for the communal glass tucked away from the glaring sun. Then a few steps on there’s a more sober bit of Vinca history. A monument of marble inside what appears to be a sheep pen. You might step closer to try to make sense of it.

On the 24th of August, 1944, barbaric and aggressive Nazi-Fascist soldiers brought 20 young people into this pen and slaughtered them, according to the sign, a remembrance as moving and thought-provoking as that found at a similarly remote but better known outpost in Tuscany, Sant Anna di Stazzema. These mountain villages, remote as they were, became hotbeds of resistance in the war—successful ones, enough to evoke the ire of the enemy no end.

You'll likely remember Vinca.